An Indian couple fell to their deaths from a popular overlook at the Yosemite National Park last week. Park rangers recovered the bodies of Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, on Thursday from about 800 feet below Taft Point, a vertigo-inducing granite ledge that doesn’t have a railing. Visitors had spotted the bodies a day earlier.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the couple, both software engineers working in the US, had recently moved from New York after Viswanath took a job as a systems engineer at Cisco, based in San Jose.
“We still do not know what caused them to fall. We’re trying to understand what happened. We may never know, (but) from everything we see, this was a tragic fall,” park spokesperson Jamie Richards was quoted as saying in the report.
The recovery operation involved using technical climbing and rappelling techniques, in addition to helicopter support from the California Highway Patrol for a short-haul operation.
Dr Nisha Kuruvilla, a professor at the College of Engineering, Chengannur, in Kerala’s Alapuzha district, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Viswanath and Moorthy had been her students and had got married four years ago. Kuruvilla described them as “very good students” and “fond of traveling”.
Together, they chronicled their adventures of travelling around the world in a blog called 'Holidays and HappilyEverAfters'.
On the cover of Viswanath’s Facebook page is a picture of the two of them smiling on the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon.
“Our hearts go to the friends and family members of this lovely couple. May their souls rest in peace,” College of Engineering, Chengannur, said in a Facebook post.
Raj Katta, 24, of New York, said he got to know both of them while attending Bradley University, in Illinois. He said Viswanath was a “thoughtful and amazing guy, very talented. They are a really happy couple. Very positive.”
Katta described Moorthy as positive and enthusiastic. “She’s one of those girls who wants to explore the world and discover a deeper meaning in life.”
He said in the report that Viswanath and Moorthy had decided six months ago that he would take the job at Cisco and they would live in California for a year or so.
